


Hope Boldly

by hutchabelle



Category: The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 07:43:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8004148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hutchabelle/pseuds/hutchabelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This chapter was written for d12drabbles, prompt 10--Hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope Boldly

When I was six, my parents took me to Sunday School. My teacher, an elderly woman we all called Grandma Sae, taught me Bible verses from memory. My favorite was 2 Corinthians 3:12.

 

“Since we have such a hope, we are very bold.”

 

That’s the verse. It’s certainly not the most famous of scriptures. It’s not even the best well-known in either of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, but it stuck with me.

 

In all honestly, most people would look at my life and at those in my hometown and wonder what it is that could possibly inspire any type of hope. I had practically no family life as I grew up. My mom believed in corporal punishment—both in and out of school—but I didn’t ever seem to need it unless it was at her hand. My father drank too much to cope with the guilt he felt at failing to protect his children, and my brothers spent more time keeping their heads down than they did attempting to shield me from our mother’s fists.

 

I grew up fairly poor. My family owned a bakery, but that only garnered a working class income in the small town of poverty-stricken Seam, West Virginia. Granted, we had more than most families who lived in the mining town, but that wasn’t saying much. With no living grandparents and no other extended family in the state, we bullied through and did the best we could.

 

Protestant Christianity was part of everyday life in the isolated area where we lived. Town folk prayed when the men went down into the mines and didn’t stop until they came up again. Children blessed the food set before them at meal time, and Psalm 23 comforted widows whose husbands died from black lung and every other disease imaginable.

 

No, there wasn’t much chance to hope in my hometown, but then again, there wasn’t anything to be terribly bold about either. If you could do either, you were special. If you could do both…well, that was almost too good to be true.

 

That was Katniss Everdeen for me. She was the daughter of a coal miner and a midwife and was in my grade in school. I fell in love with her when we were in Kindergarten and I heard her sing. She raised her hand boldly when the teacher asked for volunteers in music class.  Her silver eyes flashed, and her dark hair hung in two braids down her back. Her stance wasn’t timid in any way, and I knew then she was someone who wouldn’t back down from a challenge. I didn’t have a word for her back then, but the next year I learned my favorite verse. From that moment, I hoped I could be bold enough to catch Katniss Everdeen’s eye.

 

For the rest of Kindergarten and throughout elementary school, I hoped she’d talk to me, but her boldness didn’t extend to engaging with her classmates. Katniss was shy and reserved when she wasn’t singing, and no one dared interrupt her when the voice of an angel fell from her lips. That’s what it sounded like when she sang. A chorus of angels couldn’t have been more beautiful, and I hoped every day to hear her sing again. I wasn’t bold enough to talk to her, though. My mom’s fists and constant barrage of insults drained my self-confidence. Positive my love interest would reject me, I kept silent around her.

 

In middle school, there was a mine explosion in town, and I watched hope drain from her eyes when her father didn’t emerge from the smoking bowels of the earth. She waited for hours as others reached the surface, but he didn’t materialize. I longed to comfort her, but there wasn’t anything I could do. Weeks later, I realized she looked thinner, and I started sneaking baked goods from my parents’ shop into her locker at school. I wanted to be bold like her and leave a note explaining they were from me. Better yet, I wanted to tell her, but my hope was that she find her own joy in life again.

 

In junior high, I joined the wrestling team and won an art contest. That was as bold as I got, but I was still hopeful Katniss would notice me. She might have if she’d looked around, but she spent her lunches with her friend Madge, the mayor’s kid who kept her head down and tried not to draw attention to herself. Katniss won an archery tournament, and then went on to become one of the best archers in the state by high school. At one of the competitions, she met Gale Hawthorne, a male competitor from the next town over, and they started dating. At that point, I thought all hope was lost. I’d waited too long to be bold, to ask her out, to let her know I cared.

 

The night of our high school graduation, I decided not to make that mistake again since there was no guarantee that I’d see her again when we weren’t stuck in the school building together every day. At our senior party, Katniss showed up alone, and my friend and classmate, Delly Cartwright, let me know that she was single again and that she’d asked about me. I don’t know if it was the possibility of the night passing without talking to her or the alcohol that made me do it, but I kissed her in the shadows when she slipped away from the bonfire.

 

When our lips met and her mouth opened under mine, hope blossomed in my chest. With her, I learned to stop doubting and to go for it. I learned to live boldly. I learned to quit questioning whether or not something would go wrong and expect that things would go right. Together, we took chances and pursued dreams that made no sense for two small town kids shackled in poverty. We made bold choices. We rejected the notion that we could fail, and because of that, we made it.

 

How? Well, that’s another story—if you’re bold enough to ask.


End file.
